"Find out what's new and what's next! Join us at our Press Conference at Mobile World Congress for the latest news on our Xperia smartphone portfolio and strategy". That's the wording on the invitations Sony is already sending out, preparing for MWC. While at CES, Sony introduced the 4G LTE Xperia Ion on AT&T, the Xperia S, as well as the Xperia NX and Xperia acro HD for Japan. Make sure Sony will not come empty-handed to MWC, where last year they introduced the Xperia Play, Neo and Pro devices, aside from the European intro of the Arc. We've seen the MT27i smartphone recently tipped as a ...

The Samsung Galaxy S III is slowly starting to turn from a rumored handset far-off in the future to something very much real and in the here-and-now, as you can see from our recent find of an image apparently taken with the GS3's main camera. Of course, just because we have this new evidence of the handset doesn't mean the rumors will be stopping, and the latest to address the GS3 suggest Samsung may outfit the phone with a 3D screen. We've yet to see Samsung embrace autostereoscopic 3D displays, as competitors like LG and HTC have. While the tech was around earlier, 2011 was the first ...

We've told you before that according to various sources inside Google Android Honeycomb won't be coming smartphones -- it's tablet only. We've also heard that "parts of Honeycomb" will come to smartphones. We finally have some definitive information, and it comes straight from the top. Google's CEO came out and told us that Android version "I" (which we think is Ice Cream Sandwich) will combine Gingerbread and Honeycomb. Whether or not Ice Cream Sandwich will be just for smartphones or if it will be for tablets as well wasn't addressed. That certainly makes sense. Doing so allowed Google ...

Here is the HTC ChaCha "Facebook phone" as it will look when released by AT&T. Not much has changed since the QWERTY candybar was announced at Mobile World Congress in February, although there are a few noticable differences. Besides the fact that the Facebook button itself continues to evolve, we can see that the function keys have been both re-colored and slightly rearranged. Also, it appears as if this model will not be a so-called 4G HSPA+ handset, at least according to the 3G icon in the screenshot. If that leaked mini-roadmap we saw turns out to be accurate, ChaCha should start ...

Back at MWC, a source inside HTC hinted that Android Gingerbread 2.3.x should be coming to the Desire HD "around April". Since then we've heard of one "official" update leaked earlier this month, but it turns out that was just an internal test build. Today, thanks to a pocketnow tipster, we've learned that another Gingerbread build has leaked. This time it's reportedly much more complete, and could likely be the final release. Dubbed "build 187331" the ROM is the World-Wide English version 2.36.405.8 and includes an updated version of the phone's radio. If you've got a Desire HD and are ...

Major mobile retailer Expansys has posted a product page for the so-called HTC Desire HD2, referring to it as "Pyramid" in the part number. As we heard last week, Pyramid is supposedly a flagship Android device running a dual-core 1.2-GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon and featuring a 4.3-inch qHD (540 x 960) display with 16:9 aspect ratio, along with HSPA+ capabilities. At the time, a May T-Mobile launch was rumored. This new information lines up nicely with previous reports, as well as with some recent boasting that HTC has been doing. Presumably we're now to expect the Desire 2 (Saga), Desire HD2 ...

It shouldn't be much of a surprise that the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play is hitting AT&T alongside Verizon -- we've already seen model number R800at pop up in a few places -- and now some shots from that device have been uploaded to Picasa with a very clear reference to AT&T in some of the frames. About half of the images from a recent testing session feature the photographer's own computer monitor running diagnostic software, with the particular file being viewed titled "Interaction%20ATT.mht." Since these testers almost always have material on-screen which is related to the handset ...

At MWC, Sandisk announced that they would be offering offering the movie Iron Man 2 pre-loaded with each MetroPCS Samsung Galaxy Indulge phone. The movie comes on a 4GB microSD shipped with the device. Tucked away in the press release is a bit of info that the microSD is an "intelligent mobile memory card" which phones home to provide tracking data to MetroPCS. The movie can be instantly played by inserted the card into the Indulge, which also triggers the microSD to phone home and provide specific, real-time data to MetroPCS. Sandisk says the data collected is anonymous and the aggregated ...

This week we talk about Mobile World Congress, where Sony Ericsson introduced the Xperia Play, Neo, Pro, and Arc; HTC announced the Desire S, Wildfire S, Incredible S, Salsa, and ChaCha; Samsung introduced the Galaxy S II; an LG unveiled the Optimus 3D. We also talk about Apple's next iPhone, Honeycomb running on Android phones, AT&T's VoLTE ambitions, the leaked Dell roadmap, and new phone releases for this week. The PocketCast is now available both on iTunes and on Zune. You can get to each just by searching for "Pocketnow." Or, here is the direct download. And some other listening options:

Microsoft seems to have a thing with Mobile World Congress as all big news related to Windows Phone 7 gets announced in Barcelona. At last year's show, Steve Ballmer announced Windows Phone 7 at the Microsoft Keynote, a new platform, built from scratch, a game changer if you will. One year later  and approximately 4 months after the platform launch  Steve Ballmer announced great features to be added to Windows Phone 7 later this year: Copy/Paste is already upcoming; there will be Twitter integration in the People Hub, task switching and a brand new mobile version of IE9 with HTML5 ...

Those of you running on the BlackBerry 6 operating system can now install the leaked BlackBerry messenger 6.0 onto your device. The new version brings many new changes, including: gaming functionality using your BBM name with status updates, interaction with contacts from the media player and other apps, more members allowed in each group, cross chats, and more. For a more detailed look at what's new in BBM 6, check out the below video, shot at Mobile World Congress by BBNews.pl. Source: BBNews.pl, PocketBerry Download: Link

If you use your Android-powered phone as a navigation tool you may be interested in a new app announced at MWC called ROUTE 66 Maps + Navigation, which is coming soon to the Android Market. One of the easiest ways to get somewhere that you haven't been before is to follow another person who knows where they're going. That's not always realistic in real life, but what if an app could essentially do the same thing? That's one of the things that ROUTE 66 Maps + Navigation does using your phone's camera. This allows the app to present an augmented reality view of the road ahead, complete with ...

HTC is leading the pack in handset manufacturers updating their devices to Android 2.3 Gingerbread -- but that isn't saying much. Currently limited to only the Nexus S (by Samsung) and custom ROMs from the developer community, Gingerbread is the latest iteration of the Android operating system for smartphones. Word from MWC is that HTC is releasing the Desire S running Gingerbread later this Spring, and after that the HTC Desire "and its desirable siblings" will be updated to Gingerbread as well. The Desire HD and Desire Z will likely get the update first. What do you think? Can you wait ...

With nearly a dozen new phones announced at Mobile World Congress, you might be curious as to when the new devices will land, and perhaps more importantly, how much they're going to cost. Most of the devices will hit Europe first, where citizens are used to paying higher non-subsidized prices for new smarpthones, so keep that in mind when you peruse the prices below: Xperia Play: 649 EUR ($882 USD) Xperia Arc: 599 EUR ($814 USD) Xperia Neo: 479 EUR ($651 USD) Wildfire S: (299 EUR ($406) Desire S: 499 EUR ($678 USD) Incredible S: 519 EUR ($705 USD) HTC Flyer: 669 EUR ($909 USD) Several of ...

Waze is a cross-platform, crowd-sourced maps and navigation app that lets others know about traffic conditions, construction, road hazards, and all kinds of other stuff via information reported by people who traveled your route before you. We recently learned of a feature that should be coming to the app in the coming weeks that may help shave a substantial amount of time off your commute! To accomplish this, Waze will be releasing an update that will include an Android desktop widget which will report the estimated time required for your morning or evening commute. The widget will also ...

At MWC, HTC launched six (!) devices, five of which were new phones. That includes the Desire S, Incredible S, and Wildfire S, plus the new Facebook-focused ChaCha and Salsa. While all of these devices weren't exactly breakthroughs when comparatively considered, they all round out HTC's portfolio nicely and certainly give HTC more flexibility in terms of price points. For your viewing pleasure, HTC has posted is Mobile World Congress keynote, where you can see Peter Chou and John Wang talk about their latest generation of smartphones.

We showed them to you first, and today they became real. What we have here are two low-midrange Android phones that feature a suite of additions to the Sense UI to bring Facebook functionality forward. That means that, for example, the HTC weather clock has been updated to show friends' status updates. Also, an array of widgets have been added beyond the typical Friend Stream that let you view the status of individual people like through the Friend Channel widget. There's also a native Facebook chat client that looks pretty well-done. Oh, and they both have a dedicated Facebook button to ...

The latest upgrade to HTC Sense for Android is pretty modest: Gingerbread phones will get a redesigned app tray, the left button on your homescreen look different, and there are some new widget. One more to add to the list: you can rearrange homescreens within the Leap feature. HTC was first to introduce Leap, which allows you to get a zoomed out view of all of your homescreens with an ease multitouch gesture, last year at Mobile World Congress. This year, they add the ability to tap and drag your homescreens within Leap to quickly rearrange them. Check it out in the video below! Update: ...

The Galaxy S II is the successor to a phone that sold over 10 million units around the world. It's going to ship with a Samsung CPU (dual core, but perhaps not in all cases), 1GB of RAM, and the next generation of Super AMOLED panel technology, with availability likely for April. While the phone is going to Europe first, there's a bit of a surprise on Samsung's website for the Galaxy S II: the phone supports quadband UMTS (that's 850/900/1900/2100) which will allow it to work on AT&T's 3G network thanks to the 850/1900 bands. This means that those willing to spend an exorbitant amount to ...

The Incredible S can do a cool party trick that no other phone out there can do. The buttons can actually rotate when you flip the phone into landscape. How does this happen? We'll have to get one in the labs to look a bit more closely at the mechanism behind the rotation. Is this useful? Maybe, maybe not, it depends on how frustrated you get when you rotate your "normal" smartphone into landscape and the buttons don't rotate. It's a nice touch that could make the phone just a little bit more interesting to use.

We've been hoping to hear more about NVIDIA's next-gen mobile processors at the Mobile World Congress, specifically the updated Tegra 2 3D and the quad-core Tegra 3. Based on the slides we got a look at last month, it seemed like it would still be a long way off before we saw these chips, especially the Tegra 3, in any consumer devices. Now the company has not only shown off its quad-core product, but says we'll see the first Androids running off it as soon as August of this year. NVIDIA has code-named the chip Kal-El, which it claims offers a five-fold performance boost over the ...

OK, so the last time we told you that Gingerbread on the Nexus One was imminent, Google didn't deliver. Until we hear it straight from the Android's mouth, there's always the chance for these rumors to fizzle; people misinterpret things, timelines shift, and priorities change. This time feels a little more solid, though, as word is supposedly leaking out of the Mobile World Congress that Google's first smartphone will finally be getting an Android 2.3 update by this time next week. MobileCrunch caught wind of a casual mention of the update at the MWC, and sought to try and nail it down a ...

That was quick! On the same day of its announcement, Amazon Germany is already showing the Incredible S, which packs a 4" Super LCD display, a 1GHz Snapdragon, at 768MB of RAM, as being available for preorder. Not date is given (we're thinking early April, as HTC intends to start shipping the Incredible S in Q2), but a price is: 519 euro, which comes out to about $700 USD. We also get to see that the Incredible S ships with an 8GB microSD card. So...who is putting in their preorder? Source: Amazon.de Thanks: Mark

At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona today, HTC announced the Incredible S, successor to the HTC Droid Incredible. The currently announced Europe/Asia model does not carry any support for CDMA like its predecessor the HTC Droid Incredible, but does have support for T-Mobile's AWS frequencies. HTC did not announce support for Verizon, where the HTC Incredible first made its debut, nor did they announce a launch with any other US carrier. The device specifications also do not list CDMA compatibility. T-Mobile users can import the device immediately for use in the US. Compared to the ...